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Self-publishing

We got about an inch of snow out of our most recent storm. It’s enough to quench Bear’s yearning. It was the real thing. Cold, night, drifting sparkling flakes. The happy snowplow came by at light speed. The sun is rising in a foggy sky. Tonight we’ll be getting real San Luis Valley winter temperatures. They’re predicting -4 F (-20 C). Of course, there are days coming when -4 will be the daily high.

I’m a few days over six months out from my non-invasive hip replacement procedure. Rehab continues. A month or so ago I added a simple yoga routine to help me develop more flexibility and balance. It was difficult at first, but I was happy just to realize that I could do — on a very low level — most of the poses I wanted to do. It gets easier every time, and now I think anyone who saw me would recognize what I’m doing. I’m not a major yoga enthusiast, but I learned several years ago how really good and helpful it is. 🙂

I’ve also “run” a couple of times. I know I’m running because Bear runs beside me. I think the last time I attempted it, it might have been recognizeable to anyone that I was running (poorly, slowly, awkwardly). I have run 20 yards at a time. I would probably run farther but Bear would (I think) think we’re in it for the long haul and take off. Mostly I’m afraid of falling and yoga is helping me overcome that fear. Down on a yoga mat you’re essentially in the “post fall” position. I don’t expect to return to running. My knees wouldn’t be able to handle it, but I want to be ABLE to run 50 yards. It’s a funny goal for a person who used to run miles and miles, but it’s OK with me.

The Schneebelis Go to America is moving along on its trajectory to being a book. This past Saturday I set it up for Kindle and it’s available for pre-order on Amazon under its real title, The Price. I am waiting for a second proof copy to arrive (tomorrow? day after?) at which point I’ll finish it and it will be a legit paper back. I’m using LULU rather than Amazon’s platform this time. There’s no advantage to it other than their product is nicer. The paper is higher quality and the binding more stable. The downside is that it’s more expensive and I will make less per book sold, but obviously I’m not in it for the money. It will be available in all the usual place on December 5. It looks like there will be a little book review blog tour for it. I hadn’t thought of it, but one of my readers did. If you’re interested in participating, let me know. I now have the book in all formats thanks to help from readers of my blog. ❤

I’ve begun research for what I think will be my next project which, I think, is going to be the story of Martin of Gfenn’s teacher, Michele, who (according to my own story) got in trouble in Verona (you either had to be there or read the book, Martin of Gfenn) and was exiled to Zürich as punishment. I’ve always known (because I invented him?) that Michele fell in with a bad crowd (in this case “bad” is truly subjective). Anyway, Michele is — or at least aspired to be — a Goliard. I think he will fail at this, as it seems for a lot of medieval humanists it was a passing phase. It’s not easy living “beyond the pale.” A person can get hungry out there. I really won’t know until I get there. Meanwhile, I’m learning, reading about them and soon reading more of their (very secular) poetry.

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After a lot of soul-searching (not really but it sounds good) I’m self-publishing The Price, final novel in the Schneebelungelied. Why? I dunno. I had so much fun designing it, and I like how it turned out. By now I’ve had so much experience building my own books that I like doing it. It might be my favorite part after the initial inspiration. 🙂

I will be releasing The Price on December 5, about three weeks before Christmas. It will be available in Kindle and as a paperback. The Kindle version is available for pre-order for $5.00.

The novel is 70,000 words, roughly 200 pages — definitely not War and Peace.

I was thinking it would be cool to get some advanced reviews. If you would like to do that for me, I will email you an ePub version you can read on your Kindle or phone or? I will also have one paperback I can share next week sometime. All I ask is that you post a short review on Goodreads and Amazon and on your blog if you want. If enough people volunteer, I’ll set up a blog tour to drive readers to your site. I’ve also built The Price a “webpage.” https://marthakennedytheprice.com

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Amazon’s self-publishing platform, Createspace (RIP), was somewhat unwieldy but once you figured it out, it was simple, and customer service was responsive (to me, other people have had other experiences)…but then there was Kindle.

Publishing on Kindle was another thing completely. Not very easy. If, like me, you don’t read books on Kindle and don’t want to, you wouldn’t know how they worked. Still if you’re serious about getting your self-published book read, you learn, and I learned. It’s not as easy as where Createspace used to say, “Do you want to publish your book on Kindle?” What emerged THEN was ugly and unreadable. There was a reason for this. If you frustrate the customer enough, they’ll hire you to do it for them.

Ha.

Thank God for reviewers on Goodreads and IndieBRAG who alerted me to format problems in my eBooks. Besides that, more people bought my books as eBooks than as paperbacks. Customer service, right?

Life was good.

Then Amazon said, “Why do I have two self-publishing platforms?” and began offering Kindle publishers the option to publish their Kindle books as paperbacks. I had a feeling… Just last week, they told us we needed to “migrate” our Createspace books to Kindle Paperback (which is an oxymoron).

OK. They did most of the work but…

It didn’t work for Martin of Gfenn, and I ended up reformatting the whole thing. Yep. Hours and hours of work (somehow when it migrated the font size went up two points; it looked like a kid’s book and was VERY thick). To fix that, I pretty much had to edit the whole book (again) which was OK. I found some funny formatting inside that was probably my fault.

Their interface is far from obvious. I get that, too. They want to sell their services.

Pretty much everybody wants to sell their services. I’m even paying for radio in my car which I think is nuts. My tires were low yesterday, and I spent $2 for 6 minutes of fucking air. Yeah. Sorry. But air???

“It’s a racket,” as an old friend’s 95 year old mother used to say from her elegant, turn-of-the-century wood and wicker wheelchair. She said a couple of other things, too. If something was great, she said, “Great!” if it wasn’t, she said, “Baloney.”

Not a bad summary for a human. My roommates, however, have it figured out. They don’t like something, they bark.

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Yesterday, not long after my blog post went up, I got a text from one of my neighbors who’s currently a “snow bird.” “I want to read your hiking book.” She’s originally from San Diego and her grandson lives within sight of the main locale of the stories.

I texted her back, “It’s not happening,” with a little explanation, then I went about my morning. In the back of my mind was the book, of course.

The book is flawed. I don’t think there’s anything I can do about that. Its flaws are, in their way, reflections of MY flaws. I fixed the two new typos I’d found and closed the file.

Then I did my chores, thinking the book was a done deal, a closed subject.

I looked at Bear’s blue eyes, which are very beautiful but they are also, probably, the reason I have her.

“Whoa,” I thought. “Whoever bred Bear thought they were a flaw. Thought they indicated deafness or blindness or?” Then I thought of Dusty T. Dog. He was so flawed the shelter didn’t think he was adoptable. He’s STILL flawed, but WOW. For nearly 12 years he’s been my loyal, loving companion no matter WHAT.

Then I thought of Mission Trails Regional Park itself — the location of most of the stories in my book. It’s not perfect. It was never where I WANTED to be. It was simply what I had, the only place I could hike with my dogs during a long and VERY flawed time in my life. And it ITSELF was barely snatched from development and freeways — by whom? A group of San Diego citizens INCLUDING me! I, with all my flaws, was one small agent in the protection of 5800 acres of chaparral for future generations to see, know, enjoy.

BEYOND that, the place itself has seen a lot of life (and destruction) before it became a park — dirt bikes, ATVS, and people four-wheeling up the steep slopes. Stolen cars dumped in the stream and over the embankments. When I first started hiking there, a Ford pickup from the 40s rusted away in the stream leading to Oak Canyon. During WW II it was a military training base, including exploding shells (some unexploded shells have been found in recent years). There had been developer dreams of cutting across the hillside with a four lane freeway on the bed of a road that had been used by the water department. Neither it nor I are a pristine perfect flawless wilderness. I began to wonder if maybe it was a BETTER book because it’s not perfect.

And more… My father’s flaws, his MS, inspired me to propose, design, and raise the money for the building of a wheelchair accessible guided walkway to one of the most interesting historical features in California, Old Mission Dam.

Walkway to Old Mission Dam, Mission Trails Regional Park, San Diego

Late yesterday, I decided to write a note for the readers of my book explaining its flaws, that Createspace COULDN’T print the cover right no matter what and directing readers to the website where they could see the actual photo (including the featured image for this blog), apologizing for my weak proofreading skills and the relentless and (to me) invisible typos (just now found another one 😦 ) and explaining that it all reflects my flaws and the flaws of the world as it is.

“Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway. For you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.” M. Teresa

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Last night, I gave up on the hiking book. I’ve published five OTHER books using Createspace, and they did NOT fuck up those covers, but EVERY cover I’ve put on the hiking book, Createspace has defiled. I’ve complained, tried different designs, done everything I could think of since it’s the inside that matters most, but in this case…

And the inside. I thumbed through one of the ten horrifically ugly copies I had ordered as Christmas presents for people, and found two mistakes, just at random.

As I went to sleep last night I decided it was just fucking hopeless and maybe the book is not meant to be a slender paper back volume. Maybe it’s supposed to be something else or maybe it’s not supposed to be at all.

RIP Hiking Book

***

IN OTHER NEWS, the temperatures have arrived at their early winter manic state; 2 F degrees at night, 45 F in the day. It’s gorgeous if the wind isn’t blowing. My professional trainers (Dusty T and Polar Bear Yeti T Dog) took me out yesterday for a long walk. They were determined to test my abilities and we went farther than we have been going.

“You’re not going to get anywhere if you always do the same thing!” said Dusty T. Dog who hates change. I was completely startled by that; first, talking dogs don’t exist, and second, Dusty would never say that.

“It’s the voices,” I say to myself in one of those voices. Still, sometimes we give ourselves good advice.

The trail is a rough dirt road on which only BLM vehicles are allowed. It’s in one section of the Rio Grande State Wildlife Area. Dusty wears his hunting vest like a magic cloak although there is no one there in the middle of the day in hunting season. The slough, a marshy collection of lakes coming off the big ditch and the river, is a nesting area for geese in spring and it is closed to people from early March to my dad’s birthday in July. I watch the ground. It’s uneven enough that I could trip on something. There are some HUGE human footprints, but not many.

There’s a north wind and I wear the Hellnarian Icelandic wool cap I bought in Bogarnes at the supermarket after going to the Settlement Center to see the exhibit of Egil’s Saga. Those must have been the days. Little Egil, six years old, in trouble with his dad for getting drunk at a party.

Truth be told, the walk is boring. It’s flat. There is nothing but dried cattails, tall grass and distant bare cottonwoods to look at. And, I have to pay attention. BUT, the light this time of year is exquisite and mysterious. It lies almost flat against the ground. A herd of Angus cattle in the pasture to the south are silhouetted against it, but they’d be cattle of color anyway. A hawk flies low over the pasture. A couple of magpies fly past against the wind. I think the cranes have finally left the valley.

At .75 miles, I turn around. My goal is 1.5. Nothing, but not that easy with arthritis all over the damned place. My NEXT goal is FARTHER. I’m aiming for 3 mile walks two or three times a week.

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Hmmmm… I’m working hard (it isn’t hard. It’s fun) on the little compilation of nature essays based on my years of hiking in San Diego. It is a focal point for a book that is SO SMALL as to be almost invisible. 5800 acres out of the vastness of the world. But it was there I learned my true size. 9 inch feet and a stride of just under two feet on a good day. 7 writing classes, a shitload of grading, some dogs and a few friends. That’s the book.

I’m continuing to refine the prose at this point and I decided to add photos. I don’t know if it will ever be for sale. Some people will be inflicted with it for Christmas.

It’s an answer to the question no one is probably ever going to ask me, “So, Martha, what did you do with your life?”

“I went hiking a lot with my dogs.”

At 18 I would not have thought of that as an answer worthy of my brilliance and my energy, but I didn’t know much about life. Now I think I did good.

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I was a writer and I wrote novels. Not long ago I woke up in the middle of the night and thought, “You wrote three good books. You don’t have to write any more. Lots of ‘great’ writers only wrote one and where does it get you, anyway? You just work very very hard, deal with your own frustrations and sense of failure over the proofreading problem, shell out a thousand bucks for an editor, go through the submission process, get rejected (and ignored), make the decision to publish the books yourself, bust your ass doing that (though it’s actually, for me, a fun process), then you get to do what you have no aptitude for or interest in — marketing — and then? Some people enjoy your books very much, but most people never even hear about them. What’s the point?”

The point is having something to say.

All three of my novels SAY something. This thing I’ve been plugging away on for two years now (?) doesn’t say anything. It’s just there.

If you want to “be a writer,” you might want to think about what I’ve learned.

Unless you can do it for its own sake, it is NOT worth the time or effort. Don’t even fucking bother.

There are millions of scams out there that exist to take the money of all those people (largely baby boomers, I suspect) who have always felt they have “a book inside waiting to come out.”
–

You might indeed have a book inside waiting to come out. Just write it and shut up.
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There are conferences that cost hundreds of dollars (and they won’t make your workmore likely to sell and they won’t make you a better writer). There are workshops. There are editing services. There are marketing services. None of these things will change the market and the market is where success lies.
–

All the advice out there for dealing with rejection? “Don’t let rejection get you down. J. K. Rowling was rejected 900 million times and look what happened to her! Same with Stephen King! He was rejected 900 million to the power of 10 times and now where is he! Just keep trying!” You will reach a point where you don’t really give a fuck about J. K. Rowling OR Stephen King OR Willa Cather (same story, but only 700 million times — the population was smaller back then).
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In the process of eliminating files before transferring stuff to my new laptop, I realized — saw — that I have submitted my work to literally hundreds of agents and been rejected and/or ignored hundreds of times. Well, basically EVERY time. “Don’t let it get to you,” say the advice mongers.
–
“You try it,” I say to them at this point though once upon a time I agreed with them. “Fuck you.”
–If you have something to say, you have an edge against rejection “getting to you.”
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Youth — young writers have more appeal to agents and publishers (generally) than old writers. Why? People are looking for the “next Hemingway” or a “new voice.” This is really stupid, but we are youth worshippers in our society and this is part of it. There are many contests out there for young writers and “new” writers, and it’s assumed that “new” writers will be young people.This is both objectionable and logical. The target audience (from a publisher’s perspective) is always assumed to be the current generation with money in its pocket.
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A book that appeals to the young today will be carried along by that generation for many years though it may be completely unknown to succeeding generations. Just as an example, it’s been a long time since I heard anything about Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and yet that was a HUGE book back when I was young. Even Cowgirls Get the Blues — another book that was HUGE when I was young, probably a meaningless title to the 20 somethings of today.
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It is NOT “all about how you pitch your book” either. Pitch matters, but it’s not “all about” anything. Take any advice with a grain of salt. Why?
–It’s a crapshoot.
–What does X agent believe will sell to her vast stable of (four) publishers? What do the publishers believe will sell to their readers? Who are the readers of your book? Can you imagine them? Does that matter? (Not much…) Does the quality of your writing matter? Not a lot, no. What matters is the tempo at which the public pulse is beating, and, if you are ON it, you have a chance.

I love my novels and I loved writing them. When someone reads them and enjoys them, I’m over the moon. That is the whole point of it. Learning a couple of weeks ago that the library in Alamosa had acquired my books, I was very happy. I had no idea. That my books are for sale in the largest independent bookstore in Colorado also makes me happy — through my own effort I succeeded (somewhat) in doing what a publisher would do for me.

I cannot deny that much of this has taken the joy and optimism out of the process of writing a novel. The story I’m working on now is good, but each time I sit down to work on it, I see ahead to the future when I would — again — be attempting to sell it one way or another, asking myself questions that have little or nothing to do with my book such as, “is this the spiel that will get an agent’s attention?” “Are my characters sexy enough?” Bleah.

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I’ve self-published three very good books that have a limited audience in the United States. It’s OK. I wrote what I wrote. I couldn’t have written any other stories. They are my stories. As Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote:

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:

Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;

Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,

Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.

—

When you write a novel, you probably revise it innumerable times until it’s as polished as you can make it. Then, you then hire an editor and get it as perfect as it can be. Then you start soliciting agents who will work on your behalf to sell the book to a publisher. The publisher will then market the book to stores. I’ve done this hundreds of times over a 19 year period…

To no avail for various reasons — not just the “system.” I failed myself often.

With the third novel, The Brothers Path, there was a moment when two publishers wanted the book. I had to decide between them. Everything was equal making it a gruesome choice. I chose the one who would publish soonest and who was closest. He went out of business, and the other publisher was no longer interested.

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Kind of demoralizing.

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Anyway, it’s a saga. Combined with my experiences with my other novels over a period of nearly 20 years, I just lost heart. “What’s the point of this?” I thought. Not like there have not been any rewards; there have been awesome rewards, but at a certain point, when a person loses heart, they don’t see the rewards very easily. They just see the things that led them to lose heart and NOTHING really makes it better. Every opportunity is no longer a chance for something good, but another shot at disappointment.

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Then a wonderful bookstore that I frequented when both it and I were young agreed to sell my books. With my newly jaded perspective, I saw mostly the downside (I still see it). It costs money to have my books in the store. Then they ordered a LOT of books, more than enough, if they sell, for me to recoup my investment. It’s a big “if” but it’s still an “if.” The thing is, every “if” has two sides. The books will be in three stores. It’s the most well-known and popular bookstore in the city. They have given me a chance to hold an “event” for my novel — this is another “if” as I had to write a pretty complicated proposal and I have to invest $$$ in the event as well, but “if” they agree, they will do the kind of PR I can’t possibly do on my own.

–

So Tuesday morning I swallowed my dead heart and did the best I could with the proposal. I felt slightly good when I finished it, ate lunch, and headed into the city (Alamosa, 10,000 people) to go to the grocery store I like. I got in the car, turned the key, and Mohammed’s radio was playing a song that I listened to a lot back when I was 27 and right out of graduate school. Back then I was desperate to GET OUT OF DENVER and SEE THE WORLD. The song is “Kathmandu” by Bob Seger. I don’t even own it any more.

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“That’s cool,” I thought. Next song up, “Rocky Mountain High.”

–

I was convinced (once more) that my car radio is a cosmic messenger.

I remembered the girl who stared at a map of the world and dreamed of going ANYWHERE. I remembered that girl, three years later, her dreams having come true, suddenly homesick, standing in her apartment in China hearing John Denver on Hong Kong radio. She had NO IDEA what her life would bring. She wanted to write — she did write — but she didn’t have a story.

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I looked all around me at the mountains. Saw once more the incredible place in which my life has allowed me to land. And then it hit me. I just succeeded in what I thought I needed a publisher to do for me.

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I must have had the biggest grin in the world when I came out of City Market and the wonderful wind of the San Luis Valley hit my face. A sainted old Mexican farmer wearing an ebony cross, suspenders, a checkered shirt, dirty boots and a cowboy hat smiled back, his black eyes sparkling.

–

Heaven.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/polish/

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My heart goes out to everyone who’s sick this winter. I think it’s a lot of people. I made it to the store this morning and the first aisle I went to was the OTC drug aisle. I have never seen a supermarket shelf so ravaged and depleted. Chalk some of that up to life in a small town between two high mountain passes after two snow storms, but clearly the whole town is suffering.

I also called to see if I could see my (or any!) doctor. There are no appointments until Friday afternoon.

This cold has been hell as you all know from my copious whining. It’s still hell but climbing up slowly to purgatory. What I’m hoping is I’m not stuck in limbo long.

Sleep has been particularly bad. My sinuses have an intrinsic problem so they don’t drain easily which means — extra coughing. When I try to sleep, it sounds (to me) like a full concrete truck is working in my chest and head. I am forced to cough. It’s extremely annoying, but tonight I realized the trick to dealing with it

“Ignore it, Martha Ann.”

My mom’s wise words. Lying there, the concrete moving around in my chest and head, I think, “I can’t do anything about this, and I’m tired. I’m going to ignore.”

I’ve also had an epiphany about why my Montana aunts and uncles had motorhomes and visited me in California on their way to Texas and Mexico every winter. I totally get it. You must need to be 65 for that bit of arcane knowledge to be made manifest…

On the famous writer front, I have been asked to send The Brothers Path to the largest independent bookstore in Colorado for them to review. If they take it, I will do a book signing up there if I can find 30 people to invite (their rule). Their Colorado Author’s program has been on hiatus for a while, and last week I learned they were reopening it next month, but only for books published in the last three months. As the program has been closed longer than that, and I’ve been waiting, I had a hissy fit and “reached out” (god I hate that phrase) on Facebook Messenger objecting to the vast injustice. They responded right away and told me who to write to. The coordinator of the program responded immediately to my emailed proposal. Thank you to everyone who read and reviewed The Brothers Path and posted reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. You helped my book get the buyer’s attention. ❤

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Umberto Eco said of himself, “I’m a writer, not a reader” and I would say that the same has been true of me for a long time. But a writer needs readers, so…

Along with virtual book tours, most of the experts I consulted at the beginning of this marketing journey recommended getting jiggy on Goodreads. Goodreads — a social media platform for readers — is simultaneously a cool thing and a desperately UN-cool thing. If you’re a reader you can learn a lot about books you might enjoy, interact with other readers and have discussions. In that sense, it’s brilliant.

When I learned that Goodreads is owned by Amazon, I became a little skeptical. However, it is really an amazing platform for selling books. Along with that are “challenges” about how many books one plans to read in a year. I cannot relate to that at all. Readers are actually motivated to “quantify” their reading? More ways to sell books and for Amazon to make money. Every book links to Amazon so the reader can buy it tout suite.

Goodreads encourages the participation of authors and makes it easy to set up an author page. They have real people to help you if you run into trouble, and the people are NICE. I LOVED the support available to authors. Goodreads support believes it is on a mission for good and behaves that way. ❤

Most of the experts whose advice I found recommended a Goodreads giveaway. I did this as part of my “book launch” this past fall and marketing push, as a way to get reviews and publicize my work. What have I gained so far? Not much…

I sent 20 books at $5 each (my cost) plus $3 each shipping = $260 not counting the “goodies” one is advised to include in these giveaways — bookmarks aren’t free; my time is worth something. From this investment I have gotten one verbal review (negative and uncomprehending – you don’t request, open and read a book that is obviously about the Protestant Reformation and expect NOT to read anything about God) and two ratings.

I also bought $100 in advertising and ran five ads. This did bring attention to my books, specifically to the give aways. But the biggest thing I got from that is that my novels do not have mass appeal.

Goodreads gives statistics about who has what books on their virtual shelves to read. I noticed recently that several hundred people now have my three novels on their “to read” list and ONE person is, at this moment, actually reading one of them.

Goodreads has as one of its goals the cataloging of every edition of book ever published, so on Goodreads are two of my books that were in print and in the marketplace for a very short time. A reader came squealing by some months ago and left one star ratings on each of these two books. For what reason? I ended up editing the description of each of these books to state that the books are unavailable… but the two one-star ratings brought my overall rank down substantially.

For me, this adventure was a bomb. But I think if you have a larger budget and can buy advertising it’s more likely to work. If you’ve written something that is on the public pulse you’ll have more luck as well.

Again, it seems to boil down to knowing yourself and knowing your audience.